A Quiet Heart

My New Year's Resolution

In the many words that have been used to describe me, quiet is never a part of that list.  In 2012 I plan to change that.  Now I don't plan to abandon my talkative ways, but rather plan to take quiet to a deeper part of me.

For Christmas I received a book by Elisabeth Elliot called Keep A Quiet Heart.  Like her writing always does, she cuts straight to the no-nonsense part of a walk with God.  Her first devotion struck me right to the heart:

          Jesus slept on a pillow in the midst of a raging storm. How could He? The terrified disciples, sure that the next wave would send them straight to the bottom, shook Him awake with rebuke. How could He be so careless of their fate?
          He could because He slept in the calm assurance that His Father was in control. His was a quiet heart. We see Him move serenely through all the events of His life–when He was reviled, He did not revile in return. When He knew that He would suffer many things and be killed in Jerusalem, He never deviated from His course. He had set His face like flint. He sat at supper with one who would deny Him and another who would betray Him, yet He was able to eat with them, willing even to wash their feet. Jesus in the unbroken intimacy of His Father’s love, kept a quiet heart.

This cut straight to one of my deepest struggles.  I'll admit I'm a complainer, and I often spend my time in prayer asking God to change something in my life or make it easier.  I'll worry and fret that I'm not doing enough to make my life the way I want.  So this year I plan (with an enormous amount of help from the Almighty) to make small changes toward a quiet heart.

          God came down and lived in this same world as a man. He showed us how to live in this world, subject to its vicissitudes and necessities, that we might be changed-not into an angel or a storybook princess, not wafted into another world, but changed into saints in this world. The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances.
 
So pray for me along this journey, and may God bless you with a quiet heart as well.
'till the cows come home,
Ellie